Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 2 February 2021.
I won't be doing that, Llywydd. We have waited before introducing the regulations until, as I set out in my answer to the first question from Andrew R.T. Davies, the fact that we are moving into, we hope, more benign times as far as the virus is concerned. The need to put control on agricultural pollution in Wales is urgent—three incidents on average every week in each of the last three years. Over 90 per cent of ammonia emissions in Wales are from agriculture. The level of pollution incidents in the agriculture sphere is damaging the reputation of farmers, damaging our environment and damaging the ability of that industry in the longer run to trade with other parts of the world, given that the strength of our industry is the quality of the produce that it delivers. Now is the right time to do this, and delay would not be in the interests of the industry. The implementation of the regulations will be done sensitively, they'll be done alongside the industry, but further delay is neither environmentally, economically or in reputational terms to the advantage of the industry.